Julie Patz, who waved her little boy Etan off on his first solo walk to school on May 25th 1979, said: "That was the last time I saw him. I watched him walk one block away. I turned around and went back upstairs and that was the last time."
Commenting on her six-year-old son's attitude to strangers, she said: "Everyone that he met once was his friend and was a nice person."
And yet, the little boy sometimes expressed concern about being alone, with his mum telling the court: "At the same time he was very fearful of being lost or left alone by himself."
At the time of the little boy's disappearance, a teenage store clerk named Pedro Hernandez was among those interviewed by police in relation to the case, but it wasn't until 2012 that he emerged as a suspect.
A videotaped confession and remarks made to friends in the 1980's flagged Hernandez as a person of interest in the case,
The trial is expected to last up to three months.
